Front matter (continued 2)

She had intended to go out, but some inner voice told her to wait. Carolina's dreadful mood and reckless words haunted her. She went restlessly from room to room, and anxiously listened for sounds of her return. And so keenly was she expecting a misfortune that when the telephone-bell rang sharply, it calmed her at once.

"It has happened!" she said to herself, as she flew to answer.

The message was that Carolina had been thrown from her horse and dragged. They were bringing her home.

"I knew it!" said Kate. "She was in too awful a mood to wear spurs with Astra. I ought to have made her take them off."

Carolina was still unconscious when they brought her in. Kate caught a glimpse of her still, white face as they carried her up-stairs. She waited with feverish impatience for the doctor's verdict, with her mind full of Carolina's awful words. "I knew it!" she kept whispering to herself through a rain of tears. "God always gets even with people who dare Him to do His worst!"

It seemed hours before Doctor Colfax finally came out, with his refined face full of pain.

"Is she dead?" whispered Kate, catching at his arm. He shook his head.

"Disfigured?" continued Kate, with growing anxiety.

"Worse!" said the doctor. "She has broken her hip badly. Even if she recovers, she will be lamed for life!"

Kate covered her mouth to repress a scream.

Beautiful Carolina lamed for life!

"Crutches?" whispered Kate.

"I am afraid so!" said the doctor, with a deep sigh. "I am going to have a consultation. We will do everything we can to preserve her health--and her beauty, poor child!"

Kate turned away in a passion of tears, well knowing that to Carolina's proud spirit dependence would be far worse than death.

Bad news travels on the wings of the wind, and before the day was over Carolina's accident was on everybody's tongue.

Her sister-in-law was indignant, in a sense outraged by Carolina's behaviour. She blamed her first of all for existing in her radiant youth and beauty and so far outshining her own modest charms. She blamed her secondly for permitting Sherman to lose her money and thus make it Addie's duty to offer her a home. She blamed her thirdly, and most bitterly of all, for injuring herself so hopelessly that she could never marry, thus placing herself upon Addie to support for life. Was ever a more unkind fate invented? Addie's temper, never of the best, burst all bounds as this situation became plain to her, and she expressed herself fluently to Sherman, who felt himself included in her misfortunes as part author of them.

It was an unhappy time for all concerned, for Carolina's bitter denunciations of her fate and her grief over her dependence could hardly be checked even in the presence of Kate and her family, whose hospitality and friendship, so generously offered, put the girl under at least civilized bonds of restraint. There were times, however, when she was alone, that she relapsed into such a savage state that she tore her hair and bit her own tender flesh.

The sight of such rebellion reduced even Kate's mutinous nature to peace and quiet by contrast, and Kate was developed into a gentle friend of Christian sentiments by Carolina's great need.

The conversations they held with each other were long and intimate. Kate tried to put faith in the series of doctors who succeeded each other like chapters in a book, but the sufferer's clear eyes saw not only through Kate's kind intentions, but through the great surgeon's hopeless hopes, and from the first she knew the worst. Knew that her bright youth was for ever gone; that her usefulness was ended; that never again could she expect even to ornament a social function, crippled as she was and disfigured by ungainly crutches. Her one hope was to die. Thus she made no effort to recover, and her strength, instead of aiding her, gradually faded away until her accident, though not at first of a fatal nature, began to be looked on as her death-blow.

At this juncture, Addie, struck with remorse, came and offered Carolina a home, but Carolina shook her head.

"Thank you, Addie, but when I move from here it will be to rest for ever. I want to die here with Kate. She loves me!"

It was a bitter thrust, and Addie felt it to the verge of tears. Indeed, she was so moved by pity for the frail shadow that Carolina had become, that she forgave the girl for having been so beautiful and began to be fond of her, as one is fond of a crippled child, who had been obnoxious in health.

Trouble develops people.

Mrs. Winchester was detained in Boston by the dangerous illness of the niece she had gone to visit, and although greatly fretting at being kept away from Carolina, was fairly obliged to stay.

Carolina felt that she was welcome at the Howards, for not only Kate's mother but her father often came to sit with her and cheer her and to urge upon her how glad they were to be able to help her when she needed help.

Carolina was grateful, the more so because she felt that she had not long to live. She had been in bed several months, and while the surgeons said the broken bones had knit, yet it was agony for her to move. She almost fainted with pain when they were obliged to lift her from one position to another.

Kate spent hours in trying to interest her in the life around her. She felt frightened when she discovered the depth of Carolina's listlessness. Her weakness took a stubborn form.

"I am only one of the crowd now, Kate dear," she said one day after a long argument from her friend. "There is no use in wasting so much energy over me. Go and forget me and enjoy yourself. I used to be of the exclusive few who got their own ways always. Now I belong to the great mob of malcontents--the anarchists of the social world. I shall not want to blow up kings and presidents, but I would like to throw a bomb at every happy face I see."

Her voice trailed off to a weak whisper.

"Y-you wouldn't need many bombs, then," said Kate, "for I never s-see any really happy faces. Did you ever in all your life--either at balls abroad or the opera here, see a perfectly happy face?"

Carolina shook her head and closed her eyes wearily.

Suddenly she opened them again.

"Yes," she said, "I have seen one--the night of 'Faust.' It was Rosemary Goddard!"

Kate gave a little scream.

"Well, I'd rather follow you to the grave you seem so bent on f-falling into," she stammered, "than to get happiness from such a source. My dear, Rosemary Goddard is a C-Christian Scientist!"

Kate's tone indicated that Rosemary had contracted a loathsome disease.

Carolina fixed her eyes on Kate. She was not of a contrary disposition, yet the difference between Kate Howard's tone and Rosemary Goddard's face made her stop to think.

"I should like to talk to Rosemary," she said at last. To her surprise and consternation, Kate burst into tears.

"If you g-go and turn into one of those n-nasty things," she sobbed, "it will end everything. I'd rather you died!"

"Then never mind," said Carolina, wearily. "I don't want to vex anybody. Perhaps I shall die."

Kate jumped up. The momentary colour faded from Carolina's face and the strength from her voice. Kate recognized the change.

"I'll go and f-fetch her," she said, with her old-time change of front. "She may do you good."

When she came back with Rosemary, she saw what Carolina had seen in Rosemary's face--an illumination which no one could understand. It transfigured her.

Kate left the two girls together, and walked the floor in tempestuous anger all during Rosemary's stay in the house. Something in Carolina's eyes as they first met Rosemary's told Kate that the poison was already at work, and that Carolina was ripe for the hated new religion.

CHAPTER VIII.

MAN'S EXTREMITY

Rosemary approached the bed wherein lay the wreck of the girl she had often, when in the grasp of mortal mind, envied. A great wave of sympathy, not pity, swept over her, as she noted the weary eyes and the lines of dissatisfaction and despair around Carolina's mouth. With an impulse of love, she knelt at the bedside and took Carolina's little thin hand in both of hers.

"Oh, my dear Carol," she said, "I am so glad to see you. I heard of your accident while I was in California. I only got back yesterday."

"Would you have come to see me if I had not sent for you?" asked Carolina, childishly.

"I was coming to-day. Mother suggested it, and I was only too happy to put off everything of less importance and come at once."

"Your mother!" said Carolina, involuntarily. Then, as she saw Rosemary's face flush, she hastened to cover her awkward exclamation. "I did not know your mother knew me well enough to--to care!"

"Mother is very much changed since you knew her," said Rosemary, gently. "She has been healed."

Carolina did not know the nature of Mrs. Goddard's infirmity, so she forbore to ask of what. She only knew, as all the smart world knew, that Mrs. Goddard did something dreadful, and did it to excess. It was whispered that it was a case of drugs, but there were those, less kind, who hinted at a more vulgar excess, either of which would explain the dreadful scenes Mrs. Goddard had occasioned in public. Her intimates asserted that a terrible malady was at the bottom of her habits, whatever they were. At any rate, a somewhat scandalous mystery hung over Mrs. Goddard's name, although she had been at the forefront of every mad scene of pleasure the fashionable world could invent to kill time.

"You are changed, too," said Carolina, wonderingly, more and more surprised to see Rosemary Goddard--of all girls!--kneeling at her bedside, holding her hand in a warm grasp, pressing it now and then to emphasize an affection she felt shy of expressing, and talking in a gentle, altogether unknown tone of voice. In Carolina's uncompromising vocabulary she had privately stigmatized Rosemary as a snob, and rather ridiculed her exaggeration of aristocracy. But the coldness, the tired expression, the aloofness, were all gone. The weary eyes shone. The bored eyebrows were lowered. The curved lips smiled. The withdrawn hands were reached out to help. The whole attitude was radiant of sympathy and love.

Rosemary could not forbear to smile at Carolina's unconscious scrutiny.

"What has done it?" asked Carolina, abruptly.

"Christian Science," said Rosemary, frankly.

Carolina was disappointed that she did not rush on and explain. She had heard that Scientists thrust their views upon you and were instant in season, out of season. She was piqued that Rosemary did not give her the opportunity to argue and refute. Carolina wanted to be coaxed.

"The change in you is wonderful," she said at last. "I think it is always a little insulting to tell a woman how she has improved, so I will not harp on it. But I don't think I care to investigate Christian Science. It has always bored me when people have tried to explain it to me."

"You have a perfect right to leave it alone, then," said Rosemary. "Christian Science does not need you in the least."

Although her tone was perfectly sweet and kind, it was dignified, and Carolina's quickness at once comprehended the almost unbearable priggishness of her remark.

"I did not intend to be rude," she said, hurriedly. Then she hesitated as another thought struck her, and in a more timid voice she said:

"Did you mean that Christian Science does not need me as much as I need Christian Science?"

Rosemary pressed her hand as her only reply.

"Can it help me?" cried Carolina, with sudden fervour. "I am a wreck, physically and mentally. I have lost parents, fortune, home, health, and ambition. I long to die! I have even lost my God!"

"Christian Science will give you back your God," said Rosemary.

"I hate God!" said Carolina, calmly.

"I used to hate Him, too," said Rosemary. "In the old thought there was nothing else to do, for a just mind, than to hate Him. We had made an image of hate and vengeance and set it up to worship and called it God."

"We? Did we do it?"

"Of course! Who else?"

"Then it is all our fault?"

"It certainly is not God's fault," said Rosemary. "He has declared Himself to be Love Incarnate. If we have been stupid enough to endow Him with human attributes of our own distorted imagination, is He to blame?"

"He never answered a prayer of mine in all my life!" cried Carolina, passionately, looking at the ceiling as if to make sure that God heard her accusation, and as if she hoped to irritate Him into hearing future prayers.

"Nor of mine, either, until I learned how to pray."

"Who discovered the new way? That Eddy woman?"

"Mrs. Eddy did."

"How, I should like to know? Why was all this given to her to know and not to some man?"

"By the way," said Rosemary, as if changing the subject, "I hear that you speak both Japanese and Russian and that you did some important interpreting at a banquet on board the Kaiser's yacht at Cowes, last spring. Did you?"

"I believe so," said Carolina, wearily.

"However did you manage to master two such awfully difficult languages?"

"I studied years to do it."

"How strange that my brother was not called upon to do that interpreting," said Rosemary, in a musing tone. "He was at that banquet, and he is a man."

Carolina opened her lips to make an incautious reply, but caught herself just in time. A gleam in Rosemary's eyes warned her.

"I see," she said, reddening. "But I must say you baited the hook skilfully."

"I had to, in order to catch you," said Rosemary.

Carolina turned her head on her pillow restlessly.

"Tell me about how you came to accept it," she said, pleadingly.

"Well, I was so abnormally miserable! I had everything in the world I wanted--apparently, yet my home was full of discord. I had only a big, beautiful house. I wanted the love of a certain man. He held aloof while all the others were at my feet. I prayed wildly to my God for help, and He mocked me. Then I grew bitter and vengeful. I vowed that I would have all that life held without God, for it seemed to me, in my vicious interpretation of Him, that every time He saw me poke my head out of my hole, He hit it--"

"Just to show that He could!" cried Carolina, almost with a scream of comprehension.

"Exactly--just to show that He could. Well, then I plunged into a madness I called gaiety, and grew more and more unhappy because I saw that each day I was putting myself further and further from the man I loved. Then, as if to fill my already full cup to overflowing, mamma grew very much worse, so much so that I wanted her to die. I really felt that she had exhausted all that materia medica could do for her, and that death was the only way to end it, both for her and for us. Then I heard of a Christian Science practitioner, named Mrs. Seixas. I went to see her, and, impossible as it may sound, in the first fifteen minutes, I had told her the whole truth, mortifying as it was. But she seemed not only to inspire confidence, but to radiate help. I felt that, although I was a perfect stranger to her, yet she wanted to help me--that she would go out of her way to do it, and that the reason she would do it was because she loved much. I took her to mamma that same day, and mamma's complete healing is so great a marvel that we never can get used to it. Our happiness is almost too much to bear."

Rosemary's eyes filled with tears which rolled down her cheeks. Carolina viewed her with an astonishment that she could ill conceal. Rosemary Goddard to be talking, nay, more, feeling like that! A question was so unmistakably in Carolina's eyes, which her tongue could not gain permission to utter, that Rosemary found herself answering it.

"Then, when God had made me worthy of a good man's love, the desire of my heart came to me, in so sweet and natural a way that it broke down the last barrier of pride and left me humbly at the foot of the cross, marvelling at God's goodness!"

Carolina drew Rosemary's face down to hers and laid her cheek against it.

There was a long silence between them. Then Carolina said, fearfully:

"My hip is broken. Can that be cured?"

"God can do anything."

"So that I needn't use crutches?"

"Most certainly. You won't even limp. You will be made perfectly whole!"

"Just as I was before?"

"Just as you were before--except these bonds."

Carolina thought a moment.

"But what do I want to get well for? I have lost Guildford!"

"Nothing can be lost in Truth!"

Rosemary felt her two hands grasped firmly, and without thinking Carolina raised herself to a sitting posture in bed without pain.

"Do you mean to tell me that there is the--that Christian Science teaches that there is any remote possibility of my getting Guildford back?"

"Guildford belongs to you, and has never been lost. It is only error which makes such a law for you. Truth emancipates everybody and everything."

"I don't believe it!" said Carolina. "I can't! It's too good to be true! I don't understand it!"

"You do understand it!" said Rosemary.

"What makes you think so?"

"Because you are sitting up in bed, and you raised yourself without pain. That is because, for a moment, your soul accepted God as Love and the source of all supply. Unconsciously your mind looked into His mind, and you saw the truth."

"I believe that I could get up!" said Carolina, in a sort of ecstasy.

"I know that you can! Give me your hand."

Rosemary helped Carolina to dress, and in half an hour Carolina was sitting, for the first time in months, in a chair by the window, with Rosemary reading and marking for her the passages in "Science and Health" which bore immediately upon her case. Carolina's mind opened under it like a flower.

"Oh, I need so much teaching!" cried Carolina. "Who will help me?"

"Did you know that my mother is a practitioner and holds classes?" asked Rosemary.

Carolina almost felt her new-found rock melting beneath her feet at this intelligence.

"No, I did not. Will she take me? And will you help?"

"We will both do all we can for you with the greatest joy."

When Rosemary left, Kate came in and Carolina explained everything to her.

Kate called Noel St. Quentin by telephone and told him that Carolina had gone insane.

The next morning Carolina awakened with the happy consciousness that something pleasant had happened. Hitherto she had gone to sleep, glad of the respite of a few hours of unconsciousness. Simply not to know--simply not to be awake and to realize her load of pain and disappointment, had been her prayer. With her definite aim in life swept away, she felt rudderless, forlorn, despairing.

But suddenly everything was changed. Her weakness vanished as if by magic. Instead of dreading to open her eyes and clarify her brain for thought her mind leaped to a lucid clearness without effort. The glow of happiness which pervaded her she could liken to nothing so much as the awakening in her hated school-days to the knowledge that to-day was Saturday!

And what had brought her healing? Only a few hours' talk from Rosemary Goddard which seemed to untangle all the knots of her existence and to wipe the mists from the window-panes, out of which she had been vainly trying to get a clear view of her life, its reason for being, and its duties. Always the question with Carolina had been "To what end?" And all the answers had been vague and unsatisfactory, until suddenly she had stumbled by reason of her infirmity upon one who could answer her vehement questions clearly and lucidly.

Emerson must have been largely of the thought when he wrote: "Put fear under thy feet!" Carolina, with her sensitive, mystic nature had been, in common with all imaginative persons, literally a slave to her fear. What could it mean, this sudden freedom, except that she had found the only true way out of bondage?

With a little assistance, she was able to dress herself and sit in a chair to wait for the promised visit of Rosemary's mother.

She had known of Mrs. Goddard for years, although she seldom appeared in public. No one spoke the name of her malady, but everyone knew of her intense suffering and of the days she spent unconscious from the effects of quieting drugs. Secretly every one expected to hear at any time of Mrs. Goddard's madness or death, and Carolina had heard no news of her except what Rosemary had said until Mrs. Goddard was announced and found her, dressed and sitting up to meet her guest, with outstretched hand and happy, smiling face. As usual Carolina's expressive countenance betrayed her.

"No wonder you look surprised, my dear," said Mrs. Goddard, kissing the girl on the cheek with warmth. "Rosemary evidently did not have time yesterday to tell you what brought us both into Science. I was cured of cancer in its worst form. Did you never know?"

"I knew you were very, very ill and suffered horribly," said Carolina, "but--"

"I know. My friends were very kind. They never gave it a name. But that was it."

"Oh, how wonderful!" cried Carolina, with shining eyes.

"Not half as wonderful as what it did for me mentally," said Mrs. Goddard. "I used to feel that I had brought my malady on myself by my way of life. I was the gayest of the gay in my youth, and in middle life I found that stimulants had such a hold on me that I was not myself unless I was drugged. I ran the gauntlet of those until I came to morphine. There I stayed, and whether the morphine came of the cancer or the cancer of the morphine I never knew. But the horror of my life I can readily recall. It came to a point when the best physicians and surgeons in New York said that there must be an operation and frankly added that no one could tell whether I would come out of it or not. Pleasant, wasn't it?"

Carolina only clasped her hands together, and Mrs. Goddard proceeded:

"Then Rosemary heard of Christian Science, and without saying a word to me, she looked up the names of one or two practitioners and called. The first one she did not care for and came away discouraged. But something told her to try again, and her second attempt led her to the door of the angel of healing who, under God, worked this cure, Mrs. Seixas. Rosemary had not talked with her ten minutes before she knew that she had been led aright. She wanted Mrs. Seixas to get into the brougham and come at once, but according to Science practice she insisted upon Rosemary's coming home and getting my consent.

"You can imagine that I was not slow to accept the hope it offered, and that same afternoon I had my first treatment. Carolina, inside of an hour the pain all left me! Child, you have suffered, so you know, you can fathom as many cannot, what that means! I promised when the pain returned to call her by telephone, instead of taking the morphine, but it never did come back! She gave me treatments from her office every hour for the rest of the day and came back after dinner that night and gave me another. That was three years ago. To-day I am a well woman. I eat whatever I please and not once has the old craving for stimulants attacked me. I am a free woman and a very happy one!"

"Oh, Mrs. Goddard," cried Carolina, "thank you so much for telling me. It helps me to know that I am being cured!"

"That you are cured."

"Yes, I must believe that."

"Pardon me--not so much believe it, as you must understand it and understand why it is so. Every orthodox Christian is ready to state glibly that God is All, but they never act as if they believed it and that is the chief difference between members of churches and Christian Scientists."

"Why does every one hate Christian Science so before they understand it?"

"Christian Science is like a large crystal bowl full of the pure water of life. Left alone it simply sparkles in the sunlight of God's smile. But if you bring to it the alkali of ignorance and the acid of prejudice, this clear water becomes the vehicle of a most energetic boiling and fizzing. But when it has assimilated the two foreign ingredients the residue sinks to the bottom harmlessly, the water clarifies itself by its reflected power, and the crystal bowl resumes its placid, sparkling aspect."

"I understand," said Carolina, "that I must have caused that commotion rather often, for I used to hate Christian Science so vigorously and I hated Mrs. Eddy so intensely that I used to rejoice at every adverse criticism of her or her work, and I used to go to the trouble (when I never would have bothered to make a scrap-book) of cutting things out of the papers, and mailing them to my friends. I deliberately put myself out in order to hate it more adequately!"

"I know," said Mrs. Goddard. "Isn't it strange, when you look back on it in the light of your new understanding and your healing?"

"Ye-es," said Carolina, dubiously, "but to be quite truthful, I am afraid I am not cured of all my prejudice yet!"

"Let it go," said Mrs. Goddard. "It will pass of itself. Don't fret about it. Now tell me about yourself. You know we do not dwell upon our ailments, mental or physical, but if you state them to me, as your physician I can work more intelligently."

"Oh," sighed Carolina, "what is there not the matter with me! Where shall I begin?"

"Let it console you to know in advance that there is a remedy in Divine Science for everything. 'Not a sparrow falleth'--you remember! The table of comfort for every woe is spread before you in the presence of your enemies. Fear neither them nor to partake freely of God's gifts. The more eagerly you come and the more you partake of the feast Divine Love spreads, the more generously God will pour out His blessings upon you."

Thus encouraged Carolina told her suspicions of the fate of Guildford and of Colonel Yancey, without, however, mentioning him by name, until, led on by Mrs. Goddard's sympathetic manner, she threw her whole soul into the recital of her own and Mrs. Winchester's loss, and of how she had hoped to restore Guildford.

Occasionally Mrs. Goddard interrupted her to ask a pertinent question. It gave Carolina a feeling of comfort to realize her new friend's mentality. Carolina, was so accustomed to knowing people of capacity and brilliant intelligence that her mind reached after such naturally.

"Guildford is not lost to you," said Mrs. Goddard, just as Rosemary had.

"It will be restored to you, and you will be able to make good Mrs. Winchester's loss. You must have harmony in your life. That is your right--your God-bestowed right. You are an heir of God's boundless affluence. It is a crime for one of God's little ones to be poor, or neglected, or sick, or forsaken. Not to believe this is to doubt His promises, which are sure, and to limit His power, which is limitless.

"We do not know the way, nor must we make laws nor dictate means. But God is even now preparing the broad highway which shall lead your feet straight to the gates of Guildford. Let Him find you humble, grateful, and ready for the blessing. Don't fret. Don't worry. Don't be anxious. 'Be still, and know that I am God!'"

For her only reply Carolina bowed her face upon her hands, and burst into an uncontrollable fit of weeping.

Mrs. Goddard made no effort to check or comfort her, except by thought. When she had finished, Mrs. Goddard nodded her head, saying:

"That did you good. Now for your physical self! Was the hip broken?"

"Yes, and set by six of the best surgeons in New York. Doctor Colfax is the most hopeful, but even he says that if ever I grow strong enough to leave off crutches, I shall limp all my life."

Mrs. Goddard smiled.

"Doctor Colfax is one of the best men I ever knew. His left hand knows not what his right hand does in the way of charity, and his whole life, instead of being devoted to amassing a fortune, is given up to the healing of mankind."

"Why, I thought Scientists did not like doctors!" cried Carolina.

"We admire their intentions. Who could fail to? Among them are some of the noblest characters I have ever known in any walk of life."

"But," cried Carolina, alarmed by this praise, "you don't believe that what he says is true? Why, Rosemary assured me--"

"And I assure you no less than Rosemary," said Mrs. Goddard, "that God is able and willing to heal all such as repent of their sins and come to Him with an humble and contrite heart. You are the best judge of whether your heart is right toward your enemies. Can you bring yourself to love this man who has defrauded you of your inheritance? If not, you have no right to expect God to restore it to you. Now think this over while I give you a treatment."

Carolina watched her in so great a surprise that she forgot to think over her grievance against Colonel Yancey. Mrs. Goddard leaned her elbow on the arm of her chair, and pressed the tips of her fingers lightly against her closed eyes as if in silent prayer. Her lovely face framed in large ripples of iron-gray hair, her gown of silvery gray, her figure still youthful in its curves, her slender, spiritual hands, her earnest voice, and tender, helpful manner, formed so beautiful an image in Carolina's mind, and she longed so ardently to model herself upon the spirit she represented, that tears welled to her eyes when she contrasted her own attitude with Mrs. Goddard's, and when she recalled herself with a start, to the subject of Colonel Yancey, she found to her surprise that his importance had so diminished that he had receded into the background of her thought, and the thing she most ardently desired was not Guildford, but to put herself right with God, her Father!

At the moment that this thought formulated in her mind, a flood of divine peace poured over her whole spirit, and for the first time the pain of her bereavement lessened, and then gently passed into nothingness.

God her Father! A God of infinite tenderness and love! One who loved her even as her own dear father had loved! One who was not responsible for all the evil which had descended upon her! One who owed her only love and protection, and a tenderness such as she had received in its highest earthly form from her father.

In vain Carolina struggled to deify God above her earthly father. She had loved him in so large and deep and broad a manner that she could only realize her new God by comparing Him to her father. And Divine Science had sent this new interpretation of God to her to take the place in her sore heart of the ever-present aching sense of her great loss.

When Mrs. Goddard ended her treatment and opened her eyes, she sat for a moment in silent contemplation of the transfigured face before her. Carolina's beauty, as she thus, for the first time, beheld the face of her Father, was almost unearthly. It was as that of the angels in heaven.

A wave of generous thanksgiving and rejoicing swept over the soul of her practitioner, for she knew that she had been permitted to be the instrument in God's hands of healing a soul which had been sick unto death. Carolina's bodily healing took second place in her thought, yet her confidence was sound that that was even now being accomplished.

When Carolina met her eyes, she smiled. She had found peace.

"Now, dear child, I want to leave with you the ninety-first Psalm. Read it with your new thought in mind, and you will realize that you never have even apprehended it before. Remember, too, that you are not alone any more. You are cradled in Divine Love, for God is both Mother and Father to His children. 'The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms!'"

Mrs. Goddard bent and kissed the girl, and Carolina, usually so reserved, laid her flowerlike face against the older woman's cheek in a silence too deep for words.

"Remember, dear, to call on me by day or night exactly as if I were Doctor Colfax, for I am your physician now. But deny your error as soon as it makes its appearance and you won't need to send for me. I will come of my own accord every day and help you in your studies. Now I must go. Rosemary and I love you already. Both Divine and human love are pouring in upon you in such a manner that you shall not be able to receive it. Good-bye and God bless you, my dear!"

CHAPTER IX.

THE TRIAL OF FAITH

To understand Carolina's complete and instant acceptance of the doctrines of Christian Science in addition to her healing, it is necessary to take a more intimate view of her character.

A person of little or no understanding, or of little or no depth, would naturally have accepted the boon of restored health, whether she ever went any further in the doctrine or not. But Carolina was different. To her the blessing was in a change of thought. Marvellous as she felt her healing to be, her greatest gain was in the peace and happiness which descended upon her like a garment.

To be sure she had been in a desperate plight, both physically and spiritually, when this wonderful hand was stretched out to her in her darkness and despair, yet many to whom it reaches out refuse its grasp simply from a blind prejudice. Having ears, they hear not, nor will they when they might. It argues a particularly lovely spirit to be able to accept so freely and gladly. Carolina was not free from prejudice. Far from it. But she was not stupid. Aside from a clear, spiritual understanding, to be able to accept Christian Science demonstrates no small degree of mentality, clearness of perception, and a capacity for higher education. The Science of Metaphysics does not appeal to fools, and only wise men pursue it. Christian Science is the only religion which calls in any dignified way upon a man's brain. All the others stuff one's intelligence with cotton wool, bidding the questioner not to question but believe. Believe what his ordinary human intelligence repudiates. "If you don't understand all of me," says popular religion, "skip what you don't understand and go on to the next. If you keep on long enough you will find something that you can believe without any trouble. Let that satisfy you. Forget the rest."

But when a metaphysical interpretation of the Scriptures comes along saying: "Ask any question you will and I will give you an answer that will satisfy the best brains and highest order of intelligence among you, for the day of blind belief is past, and the day of understanding is at hand," then the highest compliment which can be paid to the mentality of the most brilliant man and woman, is to say: "They are Christian Scientists."

There may be--there are, many erratic minds attracted by Christian Science, but there are no complete and utter fools among its followers, for the mere fact that a man has sense enough to grope after the very best, instead of being satisfied with that which never completely satisfied the mentality of any man or woman of real intelligence, is an evidence that some degree of wit must be entangled in the meshes of his foolishness. While on the other hand it is doubtful if there ever was a forty-year old sect in the knowledge of man which numbered the multitude of brilliant minds which are within the annals of Christian Science.

Carolina, all her life, had been, not only surrounded by, but familiar with the best. Her father's and mother's brilliance and good taste had drawn around them many of the finest minds in Europe, so that the girl's mentality was as ripe for the highest form of religion as it was of literature or art.

She plunged into the study of it with all the ardour of an enthusiastic intelligence, and heaved a sigh of relief when she realized that at last she had found a dignified religion, free from every form of superstition, from all material symbols, and, above all, one which made it possible intelligently to obey the command, "Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you" (1 Peter iii. 15).

Her greatest fear was that she would be unable to curb the hot temper which mortal mind had made into the law that it was a Lee inheritance.

She particularly dreaded her first interview with Noel St. Quentin, Kate, and Cousin Lois. She had yet, also, to face Doctor Colfax. She had not seen him since, by Mrs. Goddard's advice, she wrote him a frank little note, saying that her healing had been marvellously hastened by Christian Science, and that she had so much faith in it that she felt compelled to relinquish all claim on materia medica, but that, in doing so, she wished to acknowledge most gratefully all that his skill had accomplished in her case.

It was a hard note to write, for Kate's assertion, which at first Carolina had indignantly repudiated, that Doctor Colfax was falling in love with her, had proved true, and Carolina knew that this dismissal of him as her physician would indicate that he need expect nothing more of her in any other capacity, either.

He wrote her a polite but stiff letter of acknowledgment, and soon afterward went away for a brief vacation.

Carolina realized how much antagonism she had aroused among her own immediate friends, and she spent many hours consulting Mrs. Goddard how to conduct herself with tact.

When Mrs. Winchester returned from Boston, Carolina experienced her first battle with error. She possessed a high spirit, and to see Cousin Lois sit and look at her in silent despair, with tears rolling unchecked down her cheeks, irritated Carolina almost to the verge of madness, so that instead of waving aloft the glorious banner of a new religion, Carolina found herself longing to box Cousin Lois's ears. Anything, anything to stop those maddening tears!

She could only control herself by a violent effort. Mrs. Winchester, like Kate Howard, was an ardent churchwoman, and to both these women Carolina's acceptance of Christian Science was the greatest blow which could have fallen on them, short of her eloping with the coachman. They felt ashamed, and in no small degree degraded.

"Whatever can you see in it?" demanded Mrs. Winchester, plaintively, one Sunday morning just after she returned from church. "Why need you go to their church? Why can't you continue in the church you were baptized into as a baby? I don't care what you believe, just so you go to the Episcopal church! It is so respectable to be an Episcopalian! Oh, Carolina, as I sat there listening to that sermon to-morrow--oh, Carolina, how can you laugh when I am so serious!"

"Do forgive me, Cousin Lois, but you couldn't be any funnier if you said you had seen something week after next!"

"I am glad to know that a Christian Scientist can laugh," sighed Mrs. Winchester, whose mild persistency in investing the new thought with every attribute that she particularly disliked was, to say the least, diverting.

"Am I improved or not since I began to study with Mrs. Goddard?" demanded Carolina, with recaptured good humour.

"I don't see any improvement, my dear. To me you were always as nearly perfect as a mortal could be!"

"Dear loyal Cousin Lois!" said Carolina.

She seldom kissed any one, but she kissed Mrs. Winchester, who blushed with pleasure under the unusual caress.

"Perhaps," she added, cautiously, "you are a trifle more demonstrative, but I always thought your apparent coldness was aristocratic."

"It wasn't," said Carolina, decidedly. "It was because I didn't care."

"And now?" questioned Mrs. Winchester, wistfully.

"Now," cried Carolina, "I care vitally for everything good!"

"You always did, I think," said Mrs. Winchester. "Even as a child you always gravitated toward the highest of everything. You are too remarkable a girl, Carolina, to throw yourself away at this late day on a fad which will die a natural death of its own accord."

"May I be there to see when Christian Science dies!" cried Carolina, brightly. She felt ashamed that she had ever lost patience with any one who loved her as idolatrously as Cousin Lois.

"Doctor Colfax--I forgot to tell you that I met him on the train, and that he asked fifty questions about you that I couldn't answer--Doctor Colfax will certainly be nonplussed when he sees you walking with only that cane. He told me he never expected to see you walk without two crutches."

"Then you do give Christian Science credit for that much, do you?" asked Carolina.

"Oh, yes. It must have some wonderful power. I simply don't understand it, that's all. And Carolina, it seems so--excuse me, but so disreputable!"

"Does it? I hadn't thought of it in that light."

"And so unsexing! Don't you have women in the pulpit?"

"Yes. Christian Science recognizes woman as the spiritual equal, if not the spiritual superior, of man."

"There!" said Mrs. Winchester, triumphantly, as if having scored a point against the new religion. "Yet woman caused man's fall!"

"No, she didn't, Cousin Lois. Christian Science doesn't take that allegory as history."

"Oh, Carolina! Carolina! You are indeed in a sad way when you forsake the faith of your ancestors! Such disloyalty cannot fail to have a depressing effect upon your character!"

"On the contrary," said Carolina, "it is as exhilarating to kick down all one's old, stale beliefs as a game of football."

At this Mrs. Winchester's asthma returned. There was nothing left for her to do, in her state of mind, but to choke or to swoon.

A few evenings later Doctor Colfax telephoned to Kate that he would drop in for a few minutes after dinner.

"H-he can't stand it for another minute, Carolina!" cried Kate. "I am crazy to see his face when you walk in without your crutches! C-Carol, couldn't you take an extra treatment or so, and come in without even your c-cane?"

Carolina's eyes blazed with joy at this unconscious admission on Kate's part that she believed even that little in the new faith.

For reply Carolina rose by means of the arms of her chair, and without any material aid whatsoever took half a dozen steps.

"Oh, Carol! Carol!" shrieked Kate, bursting into tears. "Y-you never even limped! Oh, it's l-like the d-days when Christ was on earth to s-see a m-miracle like that!"

She seized her friend in her arms and almost lifted her from her feet.

"D-do it to-night, Carolina, and we'll knock their eye out! I'll get the whole family together, a-a-and you j-just walk in like that! Will you?"

"Yes, if you will go away and let me work over it this afternoon. And don't tell anybody!"

"Oh, certainly not! That would spoil the surprise."

"I don't mean for that reason. I mean that outsiders' adverse thought would hinder my work. Mortal mind makes false laws."

"C-could you just as well t-talk United States when you are heaving your ideas at me?" pleaded Kate. "Y-you know I'm not on to the new jargon, and I fail to connect more than half the time."

As Carolina laughed, Kate nodded her head with great satisfaction.

"I am glad to see that Christian Science has not destroyed your royal sense of humour," she said. "Now I'm off to let you w-work!"

But when the door closed behind Kate, a prolonged sense of discouragement seized Carolina. She looked forward to the evening with dread. Kate made fun of it, Doctor Colfax was coming purposely to scoff, and she knew that she was to be made conspicuous because of her religion.

She tried to walk without her cane, but her knee bent under her and she fell to the floor. Her first impulse was to burst into tears, but, as she lay there alone, too far from the bell to summon help, apparently without human aid, she fancied she heard the voice of Mrs. Goddard repeating: "For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."

She said this over and over to herself, and it comforted her. Then the face of Mrs. Goddard came before her mental vision, and the lovely earnestness of her voice sounded in Carolina's ear. She remembered her last words, which now came back to her with strange and timely significance:

"The way will not always be smooth beneath your feet. Error in the guise of fear, selfish or vainglorious thoughts, revenge, self-pity, or desire to shine before others will sometimes cause you to stumble and fall. But at such times, remember to blame, not circumstances nor others, but your own faulty thought. Be severe with yourself. Then turn your thought instantly to the Source of your supply. No one can help you, Carolina, but God, your Father, Divine Love, the All in All of your existence, your very Reason for being. Realize that God is all there is. Beyond Him there is nothing and nothingness. Breathe His spirit. Drink in His divine power. Make yourself one with Him, and you will instantly find that the mists which covered the surface of your spiritual reflection of His image will disappear, and you will begin to reflect His government clearly. At that same moment, you will be healed of your infirmity."

As she repeated these last few words aloud, a feeling of complete security took possession of her, and she rose, first to her knees, then to her feet, and walked confidently to her chair by the window.

In great thankfulness she took her Bible and read the fifth chapter of Luke, and, when she came to the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses, she read them three times, with a heart full of gratitude.

Still she was not satisfied. She was groping after a sign, and she read on until she came to the words, "And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto the magistrates and powers, take ye no thought how or what thing ye shall answer, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in that hour what ye ought to say."

"The Holy Ghost!" thought Carolina. "I wonder what that really is. That is one of the things I never could understand in the old thought."

She turned to the Glossary in "Science and Health," and there the first definition of Holy Ghost was "Divine Science."

"I am answered," she said, with a sigh of complete satisfaction. "For the first time in my life I begin to understand the fourteenth chapter of John."

She leaned her head against the window-pane to watch the postman come down the street. Then she heard his whistle, and presently the maid brought her a letter. She asked the maid to turn on the electric light, and, when she had done so and left the room, Carolina read the following letter:

"LONDON, May 6, 19--

"MY DEAR MISS CAROLINA:--You have rejected my suit so often, when I had no inducement to offer you except a heart which beats for you alone, which seems to be no temptation to you, that I shall not pay you the poor compliment of offering myself to you again when, as you must have heard, I have become the owner of Guildford.

"But, having heard of your great misfortune and of your change of religion, and knowing that you love the old home so ardently that its atmosphere might effect a cure when all else failed, I beg you to accept Guildford as it stands, as a gift from your father's old friend,

"WAYNE YANCEY."

Carolina's first impulse, having read the letter twice, was one of the cold fury she used to feel when a child, and she turned pale with a rage which was unspeakable in its violence.

Too well she saw through the malice of the whole affair. Colonel Yancey knew that, after her first impact of anger had passed, her next thought would be to wish she could buy the estate back, and these terms he intended to make prohibitive. Carolina wondered if he expected to wear out her patience, and so force her to marry him, or what? She could not hope to follow with accuracy the tortuous windings of a mind as intricate as Colonel Yancey's, and she despaired of ever realizing that the labyrinth could untwist into the straight and narrow way to which she was accustomed. But, so far from crushing her, this letter simply roused in her the valiant spirit of the Lees. So far from feeling downhearted, she began to sing.

But it was not a worldly courage which was sustaining her. It was the spirit which had grown out of her afternoon of work.

She deliberately took her cane with her as she went down to dinner, although she felt that she could walk without it. She knew that Kate wanted the surprise to be complete.

With this end in view, she sat at the table until the footman announced Doctor Colfax, and then she allowed all the others to precede her.

"N-now wait until we have all had time to shake hands, and a-ask him how he enjoyed himself, and give him a chance to be disappointed or g-gloating, just as he feels, because y-you aren't down. Then y-you skate in and w-watch him drop! We'll have him a Christian Science practitioner b-before we are done with him!"

Carolina obeyed.

They were all there,--Mr. and Mrs. Howard, Kate, Cousin Lois, Doctor Colfax, and Noel St. Quentin, and all were under the impression that Carolina would never be able to walk without some slight support. So that, when she walked slowly through the door, taking her steps with great care, that she might more gloriously reflect the Light, a hush fell upon them all. They did not greet her. They rose to their feet and stood watching her in perfect silence, and it was not until Kate sobbed in her excitement that the spell was broken.

Noel St. Quentin bit his lips, and Doctor Colfax's face went from red to white in an emotion which no one could fathom. Was he chagrined to see the woman he loved cured? Did he grudge her healing at other hands than his?

They all began to speak at once. Only Mr. Howard, Kate's father, sat back and watched and listened.

Roscoe Howard was a remarkable man in many ways. He possessed a critical mind, large wealth, great depth of character, and a sureness and quickness of perception, which had all contributed to his success in life. He was a student, above all, of human nature, and he had insisted upon Kate's willing hospitality to her friend, partly from affection to the daughter of his old friend, Winchester Lee, and partly to see what effect such an avalanche of misfortunes would have upon the proud spirit and high-strung nature of Carolina. When he heard of her embrace of Christian Science, he became still more interested. He had once gone in to sit with her when her arm was bandaged from wounds from her own teeth in one of her fits of despairing rage.

Therefore, when he learned from his daughter that this was to be the girl's first appearance before her old friends, he could imagine the ordeal it would prove to her, and in his own mind he said: "Carolina will show us to-night whether she is The Lady or The Tiger!"

At first they all tried to be polite and remember that they were civilized, but soon that curious unable-to-let-it-alone spirit which Christian Science invariably stirs in mortal mind began to manifest itself in hints and covert remarks and side glances and meaning silences, until Carolina calmly looked them in the eyes and said, in her gentlest manner: "I am perfectly willing to talk about it."

Kate clutched her mother's arm.

"I-isn't Carolina a d-dandy?" she whispered. "Takes every hurdle without even stopping to measure it with her eye!"

"Well, doctor, since Carolina has given us permission to discuss it, what have you to say about it?" asked Mrs. Howard.

"I can simply say this," said Doctor Colfax. "I don't understand it. But, then," he added frankly, "I don't understand the Bible, either."

"Then that is why you don't understand my cure, doctor," said Carolina, quietly, "for it is founded on the promises which Christ explicitly made to His disciples."

"To His disciples,--yes," replied Doctor Colfax, quickly, "but not to us. We are not His disciples."

"If you are a thorough Bible student," said Carolina, "please tell me the exact words of His promise."

"I am not. You have me there, Miss Lee."

"Well," persisted Carolina, "where did He limit the power He gave, and which you admit existed at one time, to His disciples? Did He ever say, 'I will give it to you and to no other?' or 'I will give it to you during my lifetime, but after my ascension it will return unto me, because you will no longer have need of it?'"

"No, I can't remember any such passages," admitted Doctor Colfax.

"W-well, He never s-said anything of the kind," put in Kate. "I don't know much, but I know that!"

"What did He say, Carolina?" asked St. Quentin. "Do you remember the exact words?"

"Yes, I do. In one place He said: 'He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also. And greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my father.' And at another time He said: 'Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. Freely ye have received. Freely give.' Now when did the time limit to those commands end?"

"Oh, nonsense, Carolina!" said Mrs. Howard, with the amused toleration of the already saved. "How can you bring up such absurd speculations? All those questions have been settled for us by the heads of the Churches years and years before we were born."

"They were settled, dear Mrs. Howard, for all who choose to accept such decisions, but how about those of us who have questioned all our lives and never found an answer which satisfied? I can remember, as a little girl in Paris, I used to come home from the convent and ply my father with this very question: 'Why can't priests and preachers heal in these days the way Jesus commanded?'"

"Well, does Mrs. Eddy have the nerve to assert that she rediscovered the way to perform Christ's miracles?" asked Doctor Colfax.

"Mrs. Eddy asserts that in 1866 she discovered the Christ Science, or the power of healing disease as Jesus healed it, by a mental process which is so simple that to all Christian Scientists Christ's so-called miracles are not miracles at all, but as simple and natural as any other mental phenomenon which has become common by reason of its frequency."

"That sounds like sacrilege," said St. Quentin.

"It sounds like tommy-rot!" said Kate.

"And yet," put in Mr. Howard, "we must all admit that Carolina has been miraculously healed. Do you not admit that, doctor?"

Doctor Colfax's face became suffused. He bit his lip, then said, with quiet distinctness:

"If I had cut off a man's leg with my own hands, and Mrs. Eddy, under my very eyes, caused a new leg to grow in the place of the old one, I would not believe in her or in anything she taught!"

Expressions of varying emotions swept over the faces of his listeners at this sincere statement of unbelief,--some were triumphant, some incredulous, some surprised, and one contemptuous.

"But, doctor, when you see Christian Science enrolling the names of the most brilliant minds; when you see the loveliest women forsaking a life of ease and pleasure and becoming practitioners,--Christian Science doctors just as selfless and single-minded as you--"

"If you are referring to that depraved woman who claims to have cured you, Miss Lee, that morphine fiend, that drunkard, that reformed character, I beg that you will not name her as a physician in any sense of the word. The medical profession is too noble to be degraded in such a manner!"

"Oh, doctor," cried Carolina, reproachfully, "if you could only hear the beautiful way in which she speaks of you!"

"Oh, doctor, aren't you a little severe?" asked Mrs. Winchester.

Noel St. Quentin smothered an amused laugh.

"Pooh!" cried Kate. "Why pay any attention to him? He's o-only a man, and men are always wrong! H-he's talking through his h-hat, that's w-what he's doing. He's jealous."

She was sitting near St. Quentin, and, turning to him under cover of the conversation, she murmured:

"What are you laughing at behind your hand?"

"I was simply remarking a phenomenon that I have often remarked before, and that is, that Christian Science seems to possess a peculiar power--"

"Oh, oh! are you going over to the enemy?" asked Kate.

"You didn't let me finish. I was going to say that it possesses a peculiar power of making well-bred people forget what is due a civilized community. I have never, I think, heard so much rudeness, such rank inelegance, such brutal prejudice expressed on any subject which polite society discusses. It takes Christian Science every time to make people absolutely insulting to their best friends."

"Funny, isn't it? I don't mind it so much since Carolina got into it; she is so honest and so brave about answering it, b-but I used to hate it so it c-cankered the roof of my mouth j-just to speak the name of it."

"Another curious thing I have noticed," said St. Quentin, speaking for Kate's ear only, "is that those who hate it most violently at first generally end by adopting it, so look out!"

"You don't mean it!" cried Kate, in such a horror-stricken voice that every one heard her. "D-don't ask me what we are t-talking about, because it is not f-fit for you to hear," she cried.

"Carolina," said Mr. Howard, tactfully, "please tell us what you have found in Christian Science. I have always had a great respect for your intelligence, and I am not prepared to find it befogged in this instance, or that you have been deceived."

He never forgot the luminous gratitude of her look.

"Thank you, dear Mr. Howard. Let me see if I can tell you what it is and what it has done for me. It is the theory of mind over matter, put in practice and lived up to. It teaches us to understand before we are called upon to believe. It is the study of Christian metaphysics, or metaphysics spiritualized. It takes all the impossible out of the Scriptures, and makes them understandable, not to a fool, but to the wise man,--the man capable of understanding a great matter. Having done this for the brain, it teaches so absolutely a God of Love, a God who is both father and mother in the love and yearning tenderness of His thought toward us, that it eliminates all fear from our lives. All fear! Can you take that in at once? It makes the ninety-first psalm a personal talk between a father and his dearly loved child. To me it sounds just as if daddy were talking to me from the Beyond. That would be just his attitude toward me if he possessed God's power. And if you believe it,--if you can once let yourself believe it, it makes this earth instantly into heaven."

"Yes, yes, I can see that it would," said Mr. Howard. "But do not Scientists believe that it also prospers you in a worldly sense?"

"Are you giving Kate everything that heart could wish now, and are you going to leave her all your money when you die?" asked Carolina.

"That knocked his eye out," murmured Kate, in an aside to St. Quentin, but he observed that she looked singularly pleased when Carolina scored a point.

Mr. Howard waved his hand in a slightly deprecatory way.

"Ah, that is just it!" cried Carolina. "You are thinking, 'Oh, but, Carolina, I am Kate's own father, and God is just God!' Heavenly Father doesn't mean a thing to most Christians. Christian Scientists can't shirk their beliefs. If they do, they are just as they were before,--pretending or rather trying to believe what they feel that they ought to believe, but getting no satisfaction and no comfort from it. A Scientist who does not put his belief into practice can neither heal his own body nor others. So he is literally forced to be honest."

"Well," said St. Quentin, "I can easily see where the supreme and slightly irritating happiness of Christian Scientists comes in. I could be supremely happy myself if I could believe in it."

"So could I," declared Kate. "A-and I suppose it is sheer envy on my part, when I see their Cheshire-cat grins, to want to slap their faces for being happier than I am!"

"But what makes them so happy?" asked Mrs. Winchester, plaintively. "Why should they be any happier than we are? We both have the same Bible, and I flatter myself that I am just as capable of understanding it as any self-styled priestess of a new religion."

"But do you understand it, Cousin Lois?" asked Carolina, gently.

"I understand all that is good for me, dear child. I understand all that our Lord wants me to, or He would have made me Mrs. Eddy and made Mrs. Eddy, Mrs. Winchester. We are fulfilling God's will."

"I d-don't believe that, either," whispered Kate to St. Quentin. "I--I have to admit that Carolina's God is a more consistent Being than Mrs. Winchester's."

"But you have not answered my question, Carolina," said Cousin Lois.

"What makes us so happy? Well, I wonder if I can tell you. In the first place, it is the relief of dropping all anxiety. We don't have to worry about a single solitary thing. We put all responsibility off on God. You know it says 'Cast thy burdens on the Lord!'"

"But how can you?" cried Kate. "I--I'm sure I'd like to, but I c-can't get my own consent."

"That's exactly it. Well, we do it. Then, having put all fear out of our lives, what is there left to make one unhappy? If you are no longer afraid of losing your health or your money or of dying or of being maimed or injured in accidents by land or sea, or of old age or any misfortune coming to any of your dear ones, so that it leaves you perfectly free to come and go as you please, to eat at all hours things which used to produce indigestion, to eat lobster and ice-cream together, drink strong coffee late at night and drop off to sleep like a baby, and, if it eliminates all dread of the unseen and the unknowable, what more is there left to fret about, I'd like to know?"

"How about waking up in the middle of the night to worry about your debts?" asked St. Quentin.

"The answer to that is that, at first you begin by remembering that as God is the Source of all supply, if you are consistent, the way will be opened to pay your debts. And, after you once master that comforting fact, it is easy to see that the next thing will be that you won't wake up in the night to worry or even to think."

"Carolina!" exclaimed Mrs. Winchester, "do you mean to tell me that you, who used to lie awake hours and hours every night of your life, can sleep through till morning?"

"I do, Cousin Lois. Often actually without turning over. And with no bad dreams. Can you believe me?"

Doctor Colfax rose abruptly, as if he could bear no more, and when, with a little more leave-taking, St. Quentin had offered to drive Mrs. Winchester back to Sherman's in his new motor-car, and the Howards and Carolina were left alone, Mr. Howard turned to Carolina and said:

"Carol, I have heard a great deal, here and there, about your interest in Guildford and your wish to restore the place. Would you mind telling me your plans?"

"Not in the least, Mr. Howard. The place has been sold under its mortgage, as you doubtless know, but it is of no more value to its present owner than any of the land surrounding it, which is equally arable. Its only value to us was because it was our ancestral estate. It has a water-front, and, having been left intact for over two hundred years, its timber is enormously valuable. If I owned it, and had a little working capital, I could pay off the mortgage and restore the house with the timber alone."

"Why, how is that, Carolina? Is it so extensive as all that?"

"It is only about two thousand acres,--a mere handful of land to a Northern millionaire, who buys land along the Hudson and in the Catskills and Adirondacks of ten times that amount, but that is a very decent size for a Southern plantation. But the value is in the kind of timber. It is long-leaf yellow pine, which produces turpentine and rosin first, by the orchard process, then what is left is suitable for the lumber men, and the fallen trees and stumps for the new process of making turpentine. My plan was to sell the turpentine rights to the orchard people for, say, three years, then sell the timber, and afterward sell the stumpage and refuse to the patent people, or perhaps erect a plant myself. There is a tremendous profit in turpentine and a constant and ready market."

Mr. Howard sat in a large armchair, with his finger-tips together and his head bent forward, looking at the girl from under his heavy eyebrows. He was amazed at her statement of Guildford's possibilities. Hitherto he had regarded her unknown plan as probably only a woman's sentimental idea, and doubtless wild and impracticable.

"You say that the timber has been untouched for two hundred years?"

"Practically untouched. We had it examined four years ago, and I have heard of nothing since."

"Is any of this land suitable for cotton?"

"Yes, for both cotton and rice, and I should raise both. There is no reason to my mind why a Southerner should not be as thrifty with every acre of ground as the Northerner is, nor why every inch should not be made to yield in America as it does in France."

"Right! right! And the Southerners will accept such incendiary sentiments from you, because you are one of them, but, when I ventured something on the same order, but much more mild, I was called 'a damned Yankee,' who wanted to 'make truck-farmers out of gentlemen.'"

"Oh, oh!" laughed Carolina, merrily. "How like them that sounds! You know, dear Mr. Howard, they think we have no gentlemen in the North."

"T-they aren't far from it," cried Kate. "There are f-few gentlemen anywhere in the world, according to m-my definition of one."

"You say Guildford is sold?" said Mr. Howard.

"Yes, Sherman was obliged to mortgage it, but he did so without knowing how dearly I loved it. Then some one bought the mortgage and foreclosed it."

"Why, who could have done such a thing? There must have been a motive. Has coal been discovered on any of the surrounding property?"

"Not that I know of," said Carolina, in a guarded tone.

"Then there must have been some motive in the mind of the purchaser," said Mr. Howard, decisively.

Carolina was silent.

"Can you throw any light on the subject, Carol?" he persisted, but his manner was so kindly that Carolina could not take offence.

Her reticence arose from two causes. One, her natural wish not to bruit her private affairs abroad, and the other that Mrs. Goddard had enjoined strict silence on her. "Nothing can be lost in Truth," Mrs. Goddard had said, "nor are the channels of God's affluence ever clogged, but mortal mind makes laws which we are obliged to overcome. Therefore, the fewer people who know about it, the easier our work will be."

However, something in Mr. Howard's manner led Carolina to suspect that he was not seeking to be informed out of idle curiosity, and her heart gave a bound at the thought that perhaps Divine Love might be using him as a channel.

Noticing her momentary hesitation, he said:

"You need not fear to confide in me, Carol. Perhaps I can be of some help to you."

Again she hesitated. She knew that the Howard family knew of Colonel Yancey's attentions to her. Still she felt that she must venture.

"The present owner of Guildford is Colonel Yancey," she said, in a low voice.

"Colonel Yancey!"

"Colonel Yancey!"

"Colonel Yancey!"

And so occupied was each listener with his own thoughts and mental processes that each regarded that exclamation as an original remark.

Carolina looked from one to the other of them anxiously, in the short silence which followed.

"I understand," said Mr. Howard, slowly. "I think--I--understand!"

"And this afternoon," Carolina went on, "I received a most extraordinary letter from him, dated at London, making me a present of Guildford."

"Making you a p-present of it!" cried Kate. "What g-gigantic impudence!"

"He did it to irritate her into taking some notice of him!" declared Mrs. Howard.

"H-he did it to show her how h-helpless she is!" cried Kate. "He knows she has n-no money. But I think I see him hanging around until he wears Carolina out. That is his g-game! A n-nice step-m-mother you w-would make to those two children of his,--and the l-little one a cripple!"

"Children!" cried Carolina, turning white. "I never knew that there were any! He never mentioned them."

"Oh, h-he didn't want to d-discourage you t-too much," cried Kate.

"And one of them--the little one--a cripple, did you say?"

The eager pity in Carolina's voice frightened Kate. She looked at Carolina in wonder. The girl was leaning forward in her chair, her lips parted, her eyes shining, her cheeks blazing. Kate felt physically sick as the thought flashed through her mind that perhaps this altruistic pity might rush her friend into the marriage with Colonel Yancey, which even Guildford had been unable to do.

"Where is the child?" asked Carolina.

"She is at the Exmoor Hospital. Her aunt, Sue Yancey, brought here there last week for an examination. They are trying to gain Colonel Yancey's consent to an operation."

"How do you know all this?" asked Kate's mother.

"I went there to take some flowers to-day, and I saw this child,--she is a little beauty,--and I asked Doctor Shourds who she was and he told me. The trouble is with her ankles. Her feet are perfectly formed, but they turn in and she can't bear her weight upon them, nor walk a step."

"She can walk!" said Carolina, in a low, earnest voice. "God, in His Divine Love, never made a crippled baby!"

Something smarted in Mr. Howard's eyes. He, was no believer in Christian Science, but he loved little children, and Carolina's tone of deep and quiet conviction wrenched his heart.

"Carol, Carol!" wailed Kate, wringing her nose and mopping her eyes, with utter disregard of their redness, "you do make me howl so!"

"Carolina," said Mr. Howard, suddenly, "you know that I do not personally subscribe to the teachings of your new religion, but I am an observer of human nature, and I know the hall-marks of real Christianity. I have seen you to-night keep your temper under trying circumstances, defend your faith with spirit, and exemplify the command to love your enemies, and I want to tell you that if there is anything I can do toward financing a plan to buy Guildford from Colonel Yancey, and installing you there to pursue your life-work, you can count on me."

Carolina made an attempt to speak, but her eyes swam in tears, and she buried her face in her arm.

"Oh, daddy! daddy! D-dear old daddy!" cried Kate, dancing up and down in her excitement. "I knew y-you were up to something! Y-you may not care for C-Christian Science, b-but, when you s-see a good thing, you know enough to p-push it along!"

CHAPTER X.

CROSS PURPOSES

"Noel must take me for a f-fool if he thinks I don't see through him!" said Kate, angrily, to her own image in the glass.

It was about three months after Mr. Howard had offered to help Carolina to regain Guildford.

"H-he wants to p-pump me," she went on, adjusting her motor veil. "I d-don't mind trying his automobile, b-but I hate to t-think he takes me for a s-sucker!"

She rummaged viciously in her top drawer for her goggles.

"I wonder if he th-thinks I don't know he asked Carol first. Men are s-such fools! But j-just wait! He wants m-me to tell him things. M-maybe I won't g-give him a run for his money!"

But, as she ran down the steps and jumped into the powerful new racing machine, all outward trace of vexation was gone, and St. Quentin was quite as excusable as most men who believe they can outwit a clever woman.

Not that St. Quentin was particularly noticeable for his conceit. He seemed like the majority of men, who are merely self-absorbed. Yet in many respects he was quite different.

For example, he was interested in other things besides his motor-cars. He read, thought even, and was somewhat interested in other people's mental processes,--a thing which Kate quite overlooked in her flash of jealousy, for Kate had been obliged to admit to herself that, if the signs spoke truly and Noel were really in love with Carolina, it would be a melancholy thing for her to face.

"But I'm game!" she often said to herself. "I won't give up the fight until I have to. Then, if I get left, I won't howl."

There were several things in Kate's favour. First, Carolina showed no symptoms of being in love with Noel, although she must know that she could have him if she wanted him. Second, but this thought gave her almost the same discomfort as if Carolina should fancy St. Quentin, Carolina was in a fair way to become violently interested in another man,--Colonel Yancey.

The thought of how this news would stir Noel brought such a colour into Kate's cheeks that Noel, turning his eyes for the fraction of a second from the wheel, said:

"Motoring becomes you, Kate."

"I-it's more than I can s-say for y-you, then," she answered. "You look like a burglar in that mask."

"Now sit tight," said St. Quentin, "I'm going to let her out a little here."

Noel's idea of letting her out a little was more than Kate's nerves could stand. She touched Noel's arm imploringly and he obediently slowed up. Kate could hardly get her breath.

"Wasn't that fine?" asked St. Quentin.

"It was s-simply devilish. I'd rather travel in a wheelbarrow. It g-gives you more time for the scenery."

"You are just like Carolina. She hates racing. She likes to jog along about like this."

Kate leaned over and looked at the speedometer. They were going at the rate of thirty miles an hour.

"P-poor Carolina!" said Kate, mockingly. "How old-fashioned we both are!"

Noel laughed and slowed up a little more.

"There, is that better?" he asked, with the toleration a man shows when he is fond of a woman.

"Yes, now I can tell the trees from the telegraph-poles. A m-moment ago I thought the r-road was fenced."

"What is Carolina up to these days? I haven't seen her for over a fortnight," said St. Quentin.

Kate reluctantly admired him for being so honest about it. Most men would have tried to come at it from around the corner. Nevertheless, she wanted to carry out her original purpose.

"She goes to the hospital every day."

"The hospital? What for?"

"Oh, haven't you heard? Then I have some news for you."

Kate smiled with wicked enjoyment. Noel was now about to receive a dose of his own medicine, and she was to administer it. She viciously hoped it was in her power to make him as uncomfortable over Colonel Yancey as he made her about Carolina.

"Well, soon after--why, it was the very night you were at our house--after you and Doctor Colfax had gone, we still kept on talking, a-and it came out that Colonel Yancey had never told Carolina that he had children, whereas he has t-two,--the dearest little creatures,--b-but the little one, Gladys, is a hopeless cripple."

St. Quentin turned with a start.

"Yes, that's just the way it struck me. Of course you g-get the vista. Carolina instantly investigated her c-case, and she and Mrs. Goddard got it out of the doctors that there was only about one chance in ten of the operation being successful, whereas--well, N-Noel, I am not sentimental, but I thank God I--I am human, and when I s-saw the frightened look in the b-blue eyes of that l-little child--that b-baby--she's only six--when she found out th-they were going to cut her, I c-could have screamed. As it w-was, I c-called them criminals and b-burst out crying, and I b-begged Carol to c-cable Colonel Yancey for p-permission to try Christian Science."

"You did just right," said St. Quentin. "It seems to me that the legitimate and proper place for Christian Science is in a desperate case like that, when doctors agree that they are practically powerless."

"I--I think so, too. And especially when time cuts no i-ice,--not like a fever, you know, which must b-be checked at once. Well, Carol cabled, and Colonel Yancey answered in these very words, 'Have no faith, but must respect your intelligence. Do as you think best.'"

"By Jove!"

"You see? Oh, Noel, it's s-such a comfort to t-talk to you. Y-you're so clever. Most men are f-fools. But do you s-see the diabolical flattery of the cablegram? Do you also see that it puts Carolina in the p-place of the c-child's mother? Oh, when I saw the c-colour come into her face, as she read that cablegram, and that s-sort of d-dewy mother-look she s-sometimes gets in her eyes, I--I could have s-slapped Colonel Yancey's face for him!"

"I know," said Noel, in a low, strained tone which woke Kate from her enthusiasm to a sense of her own folly. Her face flamed.

"Well, I'll be switched!" she said to herself. "If N-Noel took me for a s-sucker, he didn't half state the case."

"Why don't you go on?" asked St. Quentin. He looked at her flushed face and quivering lips in surprise. "Why, I didn't think she had it in her to show such feeling!" he said to himself.

"I am the m-more afraid," she went on, looking straight before her, "b-because Carol doesn't care for any other m-man, so she is f-free to fall in l-love with Colonel Yancey, if she wants to. He is only a little over forty, is quite the most fascinating man I ever m-met, and he owns Guildford."

If Kate expected St. Quentin to betray any violent emotion on hearing these statements, she was doomed to disappointment. However, she seemed satisfied at Noel's utter silence. A smile quivered at the corners of her mouth.

"Well?" said St. Quentin at last.

"C-can't you picture the rest? Can't you see Carol and Mrs. Goddard going there d-day after day, until Mrs. Goddard got permission to move Gladys to her house? I b-believe they were to t-take her there this morning."

"Is there any improvement in the child?" asked St. Quentin.

"A little. She is old enough to understand and help herself, and she knows she is g-going to get well, or as she puts it, 'I know that I am well.' Her ankles have become flexible and her little feet can b-be put straight with the hand, b-but, as yet, they don't stay straight. S-she has not gained c-control over them."

"Can she stand at all?"

"J-just barely. But she s-sinks right down."

"Do you believe she will be cured?"

"I s-suppose you will think I am f-foolish, but I do."

"Not at all, Kate. I am not sure but that I believe it myself."

"Why, Noel S-St. Quentin! And you a Roman Catholic!"

"Well, why not? Wouldn't I be an acceptable convert if I should decide to join their ranks?"

"I-indeed you would not!" cried Kate, delighted to be able to administer a stinging rebuff. "I have an idea that they would refuse even to instruct you without a w-written permission from your priest. Ah, ha! Can't you j-just see your confessor g-giving up a l-little white w-woolly lamb like you? Y-ye are of more value than many s-sparrows."

St. Quentin accelerated the speed of the machine so suddenly that the motor seemed to leap into the air.

"Oh, Lord, Noel! D-don't do that again! The m-machine can't feel it! N-now if you had struck your horse--"

St. Quentin turned on her savagely, but said nothing.

"T-that's right, Noel. D-don't speak. There's a good deal in being a g-gentleman, after all. If you h-hadn't been, you would have said, 'S-shut up, Kate!'"

"If your husband," said St. Quentin, slowly, "ever goes to jail for wife-beating, I shall bail him out."

"I-it's strange how men agree with one another," said Kate, pensively. "M-my cousin has always said that a g-good beating with a bed-slat would about fit my c-case."

"Bright boy!" said St. Quentin. "He ought to get on in the world."

"Hadn't we better turn back, Noel? I have an engagement at five."

"Do you have to go home to dress, or shall I drop you anywhere?"

"I was just going to see Gladys for half an hour. You may drop me at Mrs. Goddard's if you will."

"Will Carolina be there?" asked St. Quentin.

"Yes, I think so. Do you want to see her?" asked Kate, innocently.

"Well, I'd rather like to see her with the child. Will you let me come in with you?"

"By all means. I should be delighted."

"Then I can bring you home afterward."

"Most thoughtful of you," murmured Kate.

"I say, Kate," said St. Quentin, after a pause, "keep your eye open for a toy shop, will you? One oughtn't to call on a child without some little present, ought one?"

"You won't find one up in this part of the country, such as you want," said Kate. "Let her out a little and we will have time to go down to Twenty-third Street."

When they came out of the shop, even Kate, extravagant as she was, was aghast.

"Noel, it's w-wicked to spend money like that. Why, that child is only a b-baby. She can't appreciate all those hand-made clothes for that doll. And real lace! It's absurd!"

"Kate," said St. Quentin, slowly, "if you were that crippled baby, I'd have bought you everything in that whole shop!"

A lump came into Kate's throat so suddenly that it choked her.

When they arrived at Mrs. Goddard's, there was no need to ask the butler if the ladies were at home, for, instead of the formal household Mrs. Goddard used to boast, the house seemed now to have become a home. Even the butler looked human, as laughter and childish screams of delight floated down the hall from the second floor.

"Perkins, what is it?" asked Kate, pausing suddenly.

"Little Miss Gladys finds that she can stand alone, Miss Howard, and we are so delighted none of the servants can be got to do their work. They just stand around and gape at her and clap their hands."

But Perkins himself was smiling as Kate rushed past him up the stairs.

"Here, Perkins, my man," said St. Quentin, "lend a hand with this, will you, and send a footman out to the motor for the rest of those parcels."

The sight which met the eye was enough to make any one's heart leap, as Kate flung open the door and joined the group.

There were Mrs. Goddard, Rosemary, Miss Sue Yancey, Carolina, and the two children, Emmeline and Gladys. Gladys was standing in the corner, partly supporting herself by leaning in the angle of the walls, but standing, nevertheless, bearing her entire weight upon her slender, beautiful little feet, which never before had been of any use to her, nor, in their distorted position, even sightly. Now they were in a normal position and actually bearing her weight, and so excited was everybody that no one turned even to give the newcomers a greeting. Rosemary and Carolina were kneeling on the floor in front of the child, while Mrs. Goddard was audibly affirming that Gladys could walk. Gladys alone looked up at Kate and St. Quentin, and smiled a welcome.

"Thee, Katie!" she lisped, "Gladyth can thtand alone!"

"Gladys can walk," affirmed Mrs. Goddard, and, as they saw the child cautiously begin to remove her hands from the supporting walls and evidently intend to attempt a step, Kate snatched the huge box from Noel's hands, and, hastily unfastening it, silently held up before her a gorgeously beautiful French doll, in a long baby dress, frilled and trimmed with cobweb lace, and calculated not only to set a child crazy, but to turn the heads of the grown-ups, for such a doll is not often seen.

No one saw it at first. Then Gladys, looking up for encouragement, glanced at Kate, and, as her eyes rested on the baby doll, with one delighted mother-cry of "Baby, baby!" she started forward and fluttered across the floor, light as any thistle-down, until she clasped the doll in her arms, and Kate seized her little swaying body to keep her from falling.

"See what Divine Love has wrought!" exclaimed Mrs. Goddard, in a voice so filled with gratitude and a reverent exultation that it sounded like a prayer.

There were tense exclamations, excited laughter which ended in sudden tears, quivering smiles and murmurs of thanksgiving, until Carolina, turning to Noel, said:

"Noel, I am sure that doll was your doing," when error again claimed Kate for its own, for the look of gratitude Noel sent in return.

"Lord, but this Christian Science does make me t-tired," murmured Kate to herself, as she released Gladys, and the two children, in a fever of excitement, sat down on the floor to undress the doll. "F-first we go up, up, up, and th-then we go down, down, down! J-just as surely as I have an up feeling, I g-get it in the neck inside of the next thirty seconds. A-at any rate, there's no m-monotony about it. It k-keeps you guessing where it will hit you n-next."

Kate unconsciously made such a wry face as she murmured these words under her breath that Rosemary leaned over and whispered:

"What's the matter, Kate?"

"I th-think I've got an attack of what you call Error, but it cramps me most cruel. Or d-do you think I could have caught cholera infantum from holding that d-doll baby?"

"Kate, you are so funny!" laughed Rosemary.

"I s-spend a good deal of v-valuable time amusing m-myself," said Kate. "I sorta have to, in a way. Everybody else seems o-occupied."

As Kate made this indiscreet remark about error, Rosemary looked back at the other groups in the room, and surprised Noel looking at Carolina with an expression in his eyes he gave to no other, and again a spasm of pain crossed Kate's face. At once Rosemary understood, and Kate saw that she did. Kate's face flamed. She pushed Rosemary into the window-seat, thrust her violently down, and pulled the thick crimson curtains together, shutting them in.

"It's n-not so!" she whispered, excitedly. "I know w-what you think, b-but it's not true. He loves C-Carolina, and in time, no doubt, she'll l-love him. I d-don't see how she can help it. I d-don't care."

"Oh, Kate, that is not true! I certainly hope Carolina will not fall in love with him. He is not suited to her, she doesn't want him, and he is suited to you. You can't deny it."

"I do d-deny it!" cried Kate, but the look that swept over her face at Rosemary's remark belied her words. "And you are to t-think no more about it. And Rosemary Goddard, if you go to t-treating the situation, as if N-Noel and I were a couple of hunchbacks or yellow fevers or s-snake-bites, I'll h-half kill you! I--I'm no subject for p-prayer, let me tell you that now."

"Kate, I wouldn't think of such a thing!" cried Rosemary, biting her lips. "Now go on. There's Noel calling for you to go home!"

"As if she could mislead me," said Rosemary to herself. "She wouldn't even try if she could have seen her own face when I said, on purpose to try her, 'There's Noel calling you to go home.' Well, bless her dear heart! I hope her love-affair will turn out as luckily as mine has, and without all my misery. Good-bye, all!"

CHAPTER XI.

IN WHICH TRUTH HOLDS HER OWN

Perhaps, as a student of human nature, Roscoe Howard rather looked forward with enjoyment to his encounter with Colonel Yancey in the matter of the purchase of Guildford. With the promptness and decision which gave the fundamental strength to his character, he at once investigated the whole transaction, beginning with the private history of the syndicate, which, in his bitterness, Sherman Lee was only too ready to give him. He drew from Carolina, by adroit conversations, much of the story of Colonel Yancey's connection with the Lee family abroad, and, to a man with an imagination, he soon was able to formulate, though by a somewhat elliptical process, a theory concerning Colonel Yancey's designs on Carolina, which fitted the case as it stood, but which needed a personal interview with the colonel to enable Mr. Howard to decide whether the man was anxious to marry Carolina from love of herself alone or with the ulterior motive of having discovered some unsuspected source of wealth on the Guildford estate.

"This man is a very accomplished rascal!" he said to himself, as he followed the winding clues in the labyrinth of the colonel's transactions. "I feel sure that Sherman's money is done for. He will never get any of that back. Yet Yancey, rascal as he is, is too shrewd to put himself in the clutches of the law. However, he is also clever enough to be willing to have Sherman think him a fool for failing. At the same time, I believe that Yancey has made a fortune. The question is, where is it?"

He fell to musing on the man's extraordinary career. Serving governments with honesty for years, waiting, studying, learning, biding his time until he could make a grand haul without fear of detection, with his honourable career to throw suspicion off the scent, and finding his quarry at last in wrecking the orphaned children of his best friend.

It was a curious type of character,--a curious code of honour,--but not phenomenal. It simply showed the effect of climate on a man's definition of honesty. Doubtless Colonel Yancey considered the syndicate of New Yorkers "damned Yankees," and therefore his legitimate prey. Did not the carpet-baggers rob the South? And, as to getting possession of Guildford, even if only in order to force Carolina to accept him with it--all's fair in love and war. Doubtless Colonel Yancey was an honourable man in his own eyes, and ready to defend his honour to the death if necessary. Mr. Howard had spent several years in the South, and did not underestimate his personal danger in the coming interview should he impinge on what the colonel was pleased to call his "honour." Mr. Howard felt that he must fortify himself with serpent-wisdom and dove-harmlessness.

For Colonel Yancey was coming home, and Mr. Howard had arranged for a meeting with him without stating his errand.

He was prepared for a confident, even a dignified, bearing in the colonel, but let it be said that he had not looked for the jaunty air with which Colonel Yancey met him when Mr. Howard called at his office at the time appointed. Considering that Colonel Yancey must be aware that Mr. Howard knew of the crookedness of the whole transaction in oil, his audacity was, to say the least, extraordinary when he rose, held out his hand to the older man, and said, genially:

"Well, sir, what can I do for you?"

The impertinence of the remark, to say nothing of its bad taste under the circumstances, for a moment staggered even the Northerner's good breeding, and, for one brief breathing spell, Mr. Howard felt impelled to imperil the whole situation by the trenchant reply:

"Not a damned thing, sir!"

But his self-control came to his rescue, and with it a determination to master the natural and inevitable irritation which many Northern men feel at being called upon to transact business with a Southern man, and which all Southern men feel when doing business with Northern men. The whole code is different and all the conditions misunderstood. Nor will there be harmony until each endeavours to obtain and comprehend the other's point of view.

It was only by detaining the conversation upon strictly neutral grounds for a few moments that Mr. Howard was able to see that the fault lay largely with himself. Perhaps Colonel Yancey was unaware that his visitor knew anything of his private history or was at all interested in the Lees. It was only Mr. Howard's smarting under the real injuries Colonel Yancey had inflicted on Winchester Lee's children which caused him to resent Colonel Yancey's assumption of the role which he essayed on all occasions and inevitably with strangers. At first, he was the bland, suave, genial, open-hearted Southerner. But at the first hint of Mr. Howard's errand, the openness snapped shut. The thin lips were compressed, the crafty eyes narrowed, and Colonel Wayne Yancey, like a pirate craft, "prepared to repel boarders."